Breakthrough Infections in Less-Vaccinated States
Charles Kurzman, “Breakthrough Infections in Less-Vaccinated States,” August 17, 2021.
Breakthrough infections are more than twice as common in less-vaccinated states than in more-vaccinated states, according to a massive survey by the Delphi Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University.
Infections among the unvaccinated are almost twice as common in the 10 least-vaccinated states, as compared with the 10 most-vaccinated states.
In Louisiana, where more than a quarter of respondents said they were not vaccinated, 11 out of 1,000 unvaccinated adults reported that they had tested positive for COVID-19 in the previous two weeks, compared with 4 out of 1,000 vaccinated Louisianans.
The infection rate for vaccinated Louisianans is higher than the rate for unvaccinated respondents in Maryland, where only one tenth of respondents said they were unvaccinated.
In other words, the presence of more unvaccinated people is associated with higher rates of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, and higher rates of vaccination are associated with protection for the unvaccinated.
Nationwide, infections are more than three times higher among the unvaccinated than among the vaccinated.
These findings are drawn from voluntary survey responses by more than 1.4 million Facebook users over the past six weeks. The sample is weighted to represent the adult population of the United States.